The news-breaking book that has sent schockwaves through the White House, Ghost Wars is the most accurate and revealing account yet of the CIA's secret involvement in al-Qaeada's evolution. Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll has spent years reporting from the Middle East, accessed previously classified government files and interviewed senior US officials and foreign spymasters. Here he gives the full inside story of the CIA's covert funding of an Islamic jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, explores how this sowed the seeds of bn Laden's rise, traces how he built his global network and brings to life the dramatic battles within the US government over national security. Above all, he lays bare American intelligence's continual failure to grasp the rising threat of terrrorism in the years leading to 9/11 - and its devastating consequences.

The gripping account of the decade-long hunt for the world's most wanted man. It was only a week before 9/11 that Peter Bergen turned in the manuscript of Holy War, Inc., the story of Osama bin Laden--whom Bergen had once interviewed in a mud hut in Afghanistan--and his declaration of war on America. The book became a New York Times bestseller and the essential portrait of the most formidable terrorist enterprise of our time. Now, in Manhunt, Bergen picks up the thread with this taut yet panoramic account of the pursuit and killing of bin Laden. Here are riveting new details of bin Laden’s flight after the crushing defeat of the Taliban to Tora Bora, where American forces came startlingly close to capturing him, and of the fugitive leader’s attempts to find a secure hiding place. As the only journalist to gain access to bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound before the Pakistani government demolished it, Bergen paints a vivid picture of bin Laden’s grim, Spartan life in hiding and his struggle to maintain control of al-Qaeda even as American drones systematically picked off his key lieutenants. Half a world away, CIA analysts haunted by the intelligence failures that led to 9/11 and the WMD fiasco pored over the tiniest of clues before homing in on the man they called "the Kuwaiti"--who led them to a peculiar building with twelve-foot-high walls and security cameras less than a mile from a Pakistani military academy. This was the courier who would unwittingly steer them to bin Laden, now a prisoner of his own making but still plotting to devastate the United States. Bergen takes us inside the Situation Room, where President Obama considers the COAs (courses of action) presented by his war council and receives conflicting advice from his top advisors before deciding to risk the raid that would change history--and then inside the Joint Special Operations Command, whose "secret warriors," the SEALs, would execute Operation Neptune Spear. From the moment two Black Hawks take off from Afghanistan until bin Laden utters his last words, Manhunt reads like a thriller. Based on exhaustive research and unprecedented access to White House officials, CIA analysts, Pakistani intelligence, and the military, this is the definitive account of ten years in pursuit of bin Laden and of the twilight of al-Qaeda.

Provides a reevaluation of the man responsible for precipitating America's long wars with al-Qaeda and its descendants, capturing bin Laden in all the dimensions of his life: as a family man, as a zealot, as a battlefield commander, as a terrorist leader, and as a fugitive

"Fascinating account. I strongly recommend it." —Jeane J. Kirkpatrick World-renowned terrorism expert Yossef Bodansky explores the transformation of Osama bin Laden from a once promising engineering student into the cold-blooded leader of the radical Islamic terrorist group, al Qaeda. With meticulous detail, Bodansky chronicles the events leading up to the international operation of hunting bin Laden. In the process, Bodansky pulls together a chilling story that is as ancient as the Crusades; a story that transcends bin Laden and any other single man, one that sweeps from Iran, Afghanistan, and Iraq to Kosovo and beyond. He takes you deep into the heart of centuries-old hatreds that have produced generations of bin Ladens and a terror network of underground armies that can strike virtually anywhere in the world. Fueled by Middle Eastern oil wealth and covertly armed by some of America's closest allies, this terror network is waging a brutal guerrilla war whose aim is nothing short of changing the course of history. The battlefields are increasingly Western city streets, and the casualties are most often innocents caught in the crossfire. Including information about al Qaeda’s pursuit of chemical and nuclear weapons, covert deals between the U.S. and Islamic terrorists, and American efforts in the years-long campaign to capture Osama bin Laden, this book is a sobering wake-up call.

This eleventh edition was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time and it is considered to be a landmark encyclopaedia for scholarship and literary style.

Electrifying investigation of White House lies about the assassination of Osama bin Laden In 2011, an elite group of US Navy SEALS stormed an enclosure in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad and killed Osama bin Laden, the man the United States had begun chasing before the devastating attacks of 9/11. The news did much to boost President Obama’s first term and played a major part in his reelection victory of the following year. But much of the story of that night, as presented to the world, was incomplete, or a lie. The evidence of what actually went on remains hidden. At the same time, the full story of the United States’ involvement in the Syrian civil war has been kept behind a diplomatic curtain, concealed by doublespeak. It is a policy of obfuscation that has compelled the White House to turn a blind eye to Turkey’s involvement in supporting ISIS and its predecessors in Syria. This investigation, which began as a series of essays in the London Review of Books, has ignited a firestorm of controversy in the world media. In his introduction, Hersh asks what will be the legacy of Obama’s time in office. Was it an era of “change we can believe in” or a season of lies and compromises that continued George W. Bush’s misconceived War on Terror? How did he lose the confidence of the general in charge of America’s forces who acted in direct contradiction to the White House? What else do we not know?.

In the aftermath of 9/11, President George W. Bush promised a grieving nation that the United States would capture or kill Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil. Almost a decade later, the Al Qaeda leader is still alive and free, even after an occupation of Afghanistan by U.S. troops of more than eight years.In November 2009, the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, chaired by John F. Kerry, issued a report on what could be characterized as one of the greatest joint military and intelligence failures of recent American history: Bin Laden's escape from his stronghold in the mountains of Tora Bora, and his subsequent flight to a location that remains unknown.Who was responsible for the decision to put too few troops on the ground, and what justification could there have been for such a decision? What alternative plans were available? What can we learn from the flaws of the Afghan occupation?Anyone interested in current affairs-and especially in the beginning of the Global War on Terror-will find this essential reading.